by: Veneranda Aguirre

You’re a 16-year old girl who lives between the middle class American and upper class Mexican cultures that exist in your border town of Nogales, Arizona. You’re on the pretty side, 5’6” and 150 pounds. You’ve always been a giant compared to the kids your age, which is just one of myriad ways that you don’t fit in. Not even to your own family. Your family nicknames are Thunder Thighs and Bubble Butt. Because you’re a Latina. But you don’t fit the look of the times: big boobs, flat ass, stick legs.

And you’re a control freak with so much effort devoted to anxiety you could power a hydroelectric turbine with enough current to light the Empire State Building. And the only thing you can control is how much you eat. So you eat all the time, but only when no one can see you. And bullshit eating– spoonfuls of peanut butter, marshmallows, left over spaghetti noodles straight out of the fridge.

You have an older cousin who, though no fault of her own, is the town beauty to whom you have eternally been compared, including up to and mostly by your mother. So you’ve got that on your shoulders.

And no one is ever gonna look at the strange you that you are. Except the creepy brother of a friend of yours from freshman year. Oh and all the lecherous older men who sexualize you since way before you are capable of processing that kinda shit.

So let’s add it up. . . you’re weird, you’ve got a complex, an undiagnosed mental illness, an unacknowledged eating disorder, an impossible goal to achieve and you’re pretty much invisible. Still with me?

Now, let’s add the kicker. Your mother thinks you’re disgustingly fat. She’ll do anything it takes to get rid of your thighs and hips and ass. Like put you on Slim Fast in 5th grade. And then the orange and white rice diet in 8th grade. You fight constantly about your weight.

One night, when she’s furious at you for sneaking something to eat, she brings in your father to talk to you. At her marked prodding, he tells you how men will never find you attractive, how no one will want to sleep with you, and how men won’t marry you. Again, you’re 16. And 150 pounds.

What do you do? You already feel so powerless. The only thing you can do is double down. So, at the ripe old age of 16, you become an alcoholic. And not like a thimbleful of Baileys. No, you’re drinking entire bottles of tequila, vodka and scotch. Sometimes mixed.

The alcohol dulls the constant anxiety, but it leads you to gain more weight. Twenty pounds to be exact. But you’ve got a debutante ball to come out in, which means you better look thin because you’re going to be in a wedding dress. If there is one thing you cannot be, it is the fat girl at the dance. You go to try on dresses at the local bridal store. And you fit into dresses, but DAMMIT, you are going to embarrass your family. So the owner of the store comes up with an idea. She’ll discount the dress if you lose thirty pounds in two months. It’s a done deal.

So, to effectuate the weight loss, your mother takes you to a Mexican doctor who prescribes you amphetamines. Speed. So now, you’re not just drinking heavily, you’re on speed. They sort of balance each other out, which is good because the only thing that matters besides being beautiful and thin and social and a perfect Mexican girl is to get straight A’s and get the International Baccalaureate diploma (which is Advanced Placement on steroids).

And the only thing you want to do is quit. Quit school, quit your diet, quit your life. You’ve gotta study, so the speed helps, but you’ve gotta sleep, so you pass out in class. And you need to keep up appearances so you start taking caffeine pills to keep up in class. Now you’re not sleeping enough– at all, really. So you buy sleeping pills. And when your anxiety gets to be too much and your depression is overwhelming, you just go to the store and buy four packs of sleeping pills. You take each tablet out of its individually wrapped blister pack and you take them all at once. You get dressed in something nice and fix your hair so when your family finds your body, it’ll at least be presentable. That’s how important looks matter. That’s how much of a control freak you are. You need to control how you look when you’re dead at seventeen.

But you don’t die. You’re just tripped out for days. You hallucinate, you talk nonsense. You run into walls. You drive over medians. And no one at home or at school notices because it seems like no one worries about you. You’re the kid no one has to worry about because you’re fucking perfect. Except for your eating disorder, your mental illness, your neurological disorder, you alcohol addiction, your use of uppers and downers, your complete lack of friends, and no one at home who cares about your mental well-being.

So you decide to drop out of school, take the GED and get a job. By now, the only person you can rely on is a punk boyfriend who just wants to watch the world burn and doesn’t think college is worth it anyway. And only then is there an intervention. You’re hauled into the guidance counselor’s office with your parents and English teacher and told you can’t quit. So you don’t.

You lose the thirty pounds, get down to a 20” waist in time for your umpteenth debutante ball. You get the IB diploma. You graduate top five in your class, get thousands in scholarships. Have a steady boyfriend who transfers colleges to be with you. You do well in school. You get into grad school at Princeton and law school at Berkeley. But, the only thing people in your family want to talk about is your weight.

A few years pass, you drop the booze, the drugs, the bullshit. But the one thing you can’t drop is the weight. Until you’re forced to get married to make things look proper for society (because Mexican girls of good standing do not sleep with men before marriage, let alone move in with them). The only dress you can find in time is three sizes too small, so again you go with the eating disorder and the speed and the over exercising. But you look good in your wedding pictures. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

But it’s not enough, because it never is. Then there’s that little matter of the divorce. So you balloon up to 340 pounds. Which is fine, because you just have body altering surgery to make your stomach small enough that you’ll never want to eat again.

No one wants to deal with the elephant in the room (who is both you and also all your bullshit). But after a serious suicide attempt on Christmas of your 35th year, something clicks. Living a life that is confined by others’ expectations and limitations has gotten you nowhere. You get therapy. You get a life coach. And you build yourself into something you like. Something you might actually love. Your self-esteem is no longer determined by a dial on a scale. You shed the insecurity, the judgment, the paralyzing terror. And you are lighter already. You become a fully-formed, three dimensional adult. People see the person you’ve become and the good ones want to know and care for you. Despite what your father told you about never being attractive to men, you’re fine in that department. Life is good.

And then last week, 39-year old you gets your hair cut. You send a picture to your dad to show him. And this is what he says: “Looking good. We should get you a pass to the gym so you can lose 50 pounds.”